Essays about: "fly ash"

Showing result 1 - 5 of 25 essays containing the words fly ash.

  1. 1. Simulation of Hardening of the MahanaKhon Tower Mat Foundation

    University essay from KTH/Betongbyggnad

    Author : Zakaria Kazi-tani; [2019]
    Keywords : Hydration; MahanaKhon tower; mat foundation; young concrete; temperature development; thermal stresses; cracking; fly ash; finite element analysis; COMSOL Multiphysics; Hydratation; MahanaKhon tower; bottenplatta; ung betong; temperaturutveckling; termiska spänningar; sprickbildning; flygaska; finita elementanalys; COMSOL Multiphysics;

    Abstract : Cement hydration is the result of a series of simultaneous chemical reactions occurring during the production of concrete. An excessive amount of heat is generated, which consequently may give rise to thermal stresses and cause early age cracks in concrete that may affect its structural integrity, and load bearing capacity. READ MORE

  2. 2. Material identification using X-ray diffraction

    University essay from Mittuniversitetet/Institutionen för elektronikkonstruktion

    Author : Linda Genetu Teggen; [2019]
    Keywords : XRD; XRF; incineration; wastemanagement; toxic elements; pollution detection; fly ash; ash; Bruker D2Phaser; DIFFRAC.EVA; chemical filter; scan file.;

    Abstract : This study reviews the theoretical and experimental aspects of the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and evaluates its use in identifying toxic elements or compounds in waste that has been incinerated. Many industries incinerate materials that contain large significant amounts of toxic elements, and these elements should be identified and re-moved to reduce environmental pollution. READ MORE

  3. 3. Alternative methods to prevent thermal cracking in concrete

    University essay from

    Author : Alexander Barchin; Navid Sedighi; [2019]
    Keywords : Massive concrete structures; heat development; cement hydration; temperature reduction; cracking; fly ash; ice; coarse aggregates; cooling methods; practical tests.; Massiva betongkonstruktioner; värmeutveckling; cementhydrataion; temperaturreducering; sprickbildning; flygaska; is; grov ballast; kylningsmetoder praktiska försök.;

    Abstract : In the construction industry, concrete is the most common material, because of its good properties such as compressive strength and endurance. Concrete is a composition of several different materials where one of the main components is cement. When the hydration process starts, large amount of heat is generated. READ MORE

  4. 4. Fatty acid composition of black soldier fly larvae : impact of the rearing substrate

    University essay from SLU/Dept. of Energy and Technology

    Author : Nils Ewald; [2018]
    Keywords : Black soldier fly; Hermetia illucens; fatty acids; omega-3 fatty acids; malondialdehyde; blue mussels; waste management;

    Abstract : With an increasing world population and meat consumption the black soldier fly (BSF; Hermetia illucens) shows potential as feed for animals, while recycling nutrients from food waste. To produce larvae of high quality as animal feed, further understanding is needed of how the substrate affects the nutritional composition of the larvae. READ MORE

  5. 5. Study of crack width within a suspended concrete slab with different amount of cement clinker considering lower climate impact

    University essay from KTH/Betongbyggnad; KTH/Betongbyggnad

    Author : Sedige Feizi; Fateha Yasmin Khan; [2018]
    Keywords : concrete; lower climate impact; carbon dioxide emission; cement clinker; fly ash; laboratory test; slab; crack width; analytical calculation; FEM-design; betong; lägre klimatpåverkan; koldioxidutsläpp; exponering klass; cementklinker; flygaska; laboratorium; platta; sprickvidd; analytisk beräkning; FEM-design;

    Abstract : This master thesis investigates the possibility of using a concrete recipe with only 70 % cement clinker for a building project named Gretas Glänta, regarding the demands of cracking for a suspended slab. The requirement to fulfill was a maximum crack width of 0.2 mm due to drying shrinkage and long- term loading. READ MORE


After a long and indulgent holiday season, your body may crave healthy foods come January. And have no fear, there is a wide range of healthy snacks and new trends coming in 2019. Susana Victoria Perez has more. Buzz60

The most popular New Year’s resolutions for 2018 were to eat healthier and exercise more. Not necessarily a surprise, right?

For adults, it’s often difficult to stick to those healthy resolutions while working, maintaining a household and managing children.

However, studies show, if adults resolute to healthier eating, so will the children. So why not include the entire family for your 2019 New Year’s resolution to eat together as a family, while also making meals healthier.

Parents and caregivers can be great role models for children when it comes to healthy habits. For younger children especially, the choices and behaviors parents exhibit regarding food and nutrition will likely have a lifelong impact.

So, the New Year is a perfect time to integrate a few easy resolutions to enhance successful eating patterns for the entire family.

No. 1: Set the example

As a parent, your decisions about food can have an impact on your children.

When possible, choose to eat from all food groups including whole grains, vegetables, fruit, lean protein and low-fat dairy.

When ordering out, choose baked, roasted or steamed foods over fried, while limiting portion sizes. When eating those heart healthy vegetables, make positive statements like “this salad looks delicious!” and “doesn’t this fruit smell great?”

Try to avoid manipulating a child into trying something new, as this may backfire. Kids are smart!

Parental attitudes and behaviors at mealtime are often enough to motivate children to eat right.

Remember, the goal is to create good eating habits by example.

No. 2: Drink more water

Choose water.

Skip the coffee, soda, soft drinks, fruit flavored beverages and sports drinks.

These drinks often have much added sugar and calories.

Always have your child take a refillable water bottle to school. Children who are regularly offered water instead of juices or sugary drinks seemingly prefer to drink water; and compared to other drink options it is also the least expensive.

It’s also important to note, water keeps the body hydrated, improves mental focus, aids digestion and is better for dental health.

No. 3: Snack wisely

Limit sugar, salt and sweets. Chips, cookies and candy are very appealing snacks but are empty calories with very little nutrition.

Snacks don’t necessarily need to be completely banned from your diet but should be replaced instead with healthier options like whole grain crackers and cheese; nut butter and apple slices or air-popped popcorn.

Snacks which include carbohydrates, protein and fiber keep hunger satisfied longer and provide valuable nutrition.

No. 4: Eat more produce

Rethink fruits and vegetables as being difficult to prepare and cook.

In addition to the usual selection of produce, most grocery chains and convenience stores offer a wide variety of pre-sliced, pre-chopped and steam-in-bag options for any budget.

In fact, many of these items make the perfect start to a meal which can be ready in 15 minutes or less.

Furthermore, get past the idea that fruit and vegetables can’t taste good. Start with a fruit or vegetable you like and reimagine what it can be.

If your kids like broccoli, then make broccoli tots, broccoli slaw, roasted broccoli. If you like fruit, make a fruit pizza or a fruit salad.

Next, explore creative flavors by adding new ingredients to something you already favor.

For example, add red bell peppers to broccoli or kiwi to fruit salad. This will not only please your taste buds but the possibilities are endless.

No. 5: Make mealtime count

Put down the electronics! Turn the television off and place your phone in another room to give undivided attention to your family.

Choose one meal a day to sit down as a family to eat together.

Plan a scheduled time at the table, even if its only for 15 minutes. For busy families with busy evening schedules, breakfast time may work better.

For families with young children, lunch time may be best.

Having a meal together is a great time to bond with your children and question them about their day.

Whatever the meal, make it count. Children who regularly participate in meal preparation and eat with family members are more accepting of new foods and choices.

Younger children can help prepare mealtime by mixing ingredients and setting the table.

Older children can help with meal planning and food preparation such as chopping vegetables.

Healthier eating in the New Year can be easy and fun with these simple strategies.

Above all else, the goal is to set an example so children learn to make wise food choices for a lifetime of good health.

For more tips and strategies for healthy eating and children, visit and

Pediatrics in Brevard’s Emine Comer, APRN, CPNP, is certified in pediatric primary care by the Pediatric Nurse Certification Board. Comer received both her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing, and her Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Florida, Gainesville.

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alexa BY THE BOOK: Karang’ae Chege - Daily Nation

BY THE BOOK: Karang’ae Chege

Wednesday September 18 2019

Karang’ae Chege's first published work was a Kiswahili poem titled Kibuyu Changu. PHOTO| COURTESY

Karang’ae Chege's first published work was a Kiswahili poem titled Kibuyu Changu. His play, Vita vya Panzi, which won the Okoth Kobonyo play writers’ competition in the late 1990s, was staged in various theatres in Nairobi.

He also wrote for KBC Radio theatre and did voice-overs for a number of years.

He has authored The Battle for Nyika, The Girl who Became a Monster, Lost in the Forest, Mtaka cha Mvunguni, A Night With Apes, Safari ya Mabwe andGaidi Lii. He is currently writing a sequel to Gaidi Lii.

What are the three most memorable books you have read so far, and what makes them so?

The first book is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I read it when I was in Standard 5. It portrays a man by that name, who got shipwrecked and ended up living in an uninhabited island with a cat and a dog. I admired his freedom and determination.

The second one is The Cockroach Dance by Meja Mwangi. It vividly captures life in Kirinyaga Road and Ngara in the seventies, in the most plausible and hilarious manner.

Then there is The Basic Principles of the Science of Mind, a book that satiates my metaphysical seeking. The author, Dr Frederick Bailed, plainly takes the reader through 12 lessons that expound on a rather complex subject of spirit, mind and body. He also explains how to do Spiritual Mind Treatment, an important tool in The Science of Mind.

How many books on average do you read in a year, and do you have a favourite spot where you read them from?

I read 50 books on average. Internet has affected my reading because there is a lot of stuff to interact with. I usually lock myself and read, just like I do when I am writing. My family has learned to respect my privacy.

One of the author's books titled Gaidi Lii.
One of the author's books titled Gaidi Lii. PHOTO| COURTESY

Which is your favourite genre of books? Any reason?

Although I am a creative writer, my most favourite genre is spirituality, new age and quantum physics.

These books simply raise my consciousness. When it comes to writing, I usually write children's fiction, and prefer reading novels.

I connect well with children. I love giving back to the universe by entertaining and teaching young people.

What is the size of your book collection as of now? Where do you get them from and what motivates you to?

I have a thousand physical books and an equal number of e-books. I inherited some physical books from my late father, Peter Chege, a long serving teacher and headmaster.

He fancied reading, bought many books and taught us how to take care of them. Some were stolen, but I keep most of them. I buy books from bookshops and online.

Which are your two most treasured books and why? Would you lend them out?

I treasure The Quantum Matrixby Adrian Cooper. It has authentic and scientific answers to many questions in life, ranging from God to the afterlife. I also treasure Our Ultimate Reality by Adrian Cooper. It explains in plain language the workings of the illusion called life and the purpose of humanity. I do not fear sharing or losing them since I can always get them electronically.

If you were to become a character from any of your books, who would you be and why?

I would be Majuto in my storybooks, Safari ya Mabwe and Gaidi Lii. Majuto is a star. I like children who shine in their calling.

If you had the opportunity to meet three authors, dead or alive, who would they be and why?

Meja Mwangi would be the first. I recognise him for his prolific and very fertile imagination. I would also like to chat with Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o about writing in mother tongue. I would also wish to meet Mohammed S. Mohammed and chat about writing wonderful Kiswahili fiction.

What is that one book you read that was out of your comfort zone?

Wuthering Heightsby Emily Brontë was out of my comfort zone owing to the sad events dominating the pages.

One of the author's books titled Lost in the
One of the author's books titled Lost in the Forest. PHOTO| COURTESY

If you were to recommend three books to a 10-year-old, which ones would they be and why?

I would recommend my storybooks, The Battle for Nyika, The Girl who Became a Monster and A Night With Apes. They are captivating adventure stories. Moreover, I have tackled progressive themes on conservation, courage and team work.

Have you ever had a bad commentary about your writing? What did it say and how did you deal with it?

Yes, getting a bad commentary is normal for all writers. My storybook, The Battle for Nyika was rejected by a certain well-known publisher. He said that the story was dreary and lethargic such that they could not put it in any of their children series.

I took the book to Phoenix Publishers and the editors there were awestruck by the story. When it was published, it was immediately approved by KICD as a class reader.

What are your thoughts on the reading culture of Kenyans in the face of popular culture?

Kenyans still read books, despite the many distractions from devices. I read somewhere that scientists have discovered that people who love books are also compassionate, intelligent and outgoing. If you visit book clubs in Nairobi and social media sites, you would realize many book lovers.

E-books versus hard copies, what is your preference and why?

Both. The hard copy still has that wonderful smell. E-books are a portable library. I also write e-books and create platforms where people can directly buy from me. Later, all these are made available as hard copies.

What was your last read and how did you find it?

The Utopian Fiascoby Wainaina Kamau and Mombasa Raha My Foot by Haroun Risa. Both books vividly capture the current social landscape and suggest an optimistic future.

If you weren’t an author, what would you be?

I would be a reggae star. Music is an art similar to writing. Reggae is for those who advance a resistive culture and everyone who demands fairness and demolition of Babylon system. My reggae would definitely bring down the walls of Jericho. It is safe when I write stories.

What piece of advice would you wish all aspiring authors to keep in mind?

To all aspiring authors, please remember that you wield the most powerful weapon with which to slay ignorance and injustice under the sun. You should, therefore, apply this weapon skilfully.


Long considered a healthy beverage and touted in ad campaigns as a drink that “does a body good,” milk can be the perfect go-to for a daily dose of dairy. However, when a glass of milk precedes uncomfortable gastrointestinal symptoms, it could be a sign of lactose intolerance. For people with this condition, milk and other dairy products may need to be deleted from the diet.

“Lactose intolerance is the inability to fully digest the sugar called lactose in milk. This is caused by a deficiency of the lactase enzyme produced in your small intestine,” said Jennifer Newkirk, a licensed and registered dietitian with Renown Medical Group. “If lactose can’t be broken down correctly by your small intestine, it travels to the large intestine where it ferments, causing symptoms such as diarrhea, cramps, gas and bloating.”

According to Newkirk, lactose intolerance typically surfaces in adulthood and is more prevalent among people of African, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian descent, as well as premature infants and people with pre-existing digestive conditions, such as celiac or Crohn’s disease.

Not to be confused with a milk allergy, lactose intolerance involves issues of the digestive system rather than the immune system. Experts report that the symptoms associated with lactose intolerance can be extremely uncomfortable but, unlike the potential symptoms of a severe milk allergy, they are not typically dangerous.

“Lactose intolerance differs from a milk allergy in that the allergy is an immune response to the proteins casein and whey found in dairy,” said Sarah Trinajstich, a licensed and registered dietitian with Northern Nevada Medical Center. “A milk allergy tends to present in the first year of life with [symptoms such as] a rash, wheezing, swelling of the lips and mouth, bloody stool, and projectile vomiting after feeding.

“It can also cause anaphylaxis, which is a serious, life-threatening allergic reaction. Lactose intolerance is a disorder of the digestive system and symptoms are not usually life-threatening,” Trinajstich continued. “A milk allergy cannot be managed by using lactose-free products but must completely eliminate all forms of milk protein from the person’s diet.”

As far as determining whether you may be lactose intolerant, this tends to come down to a noticeable pattern of gastrointestinal issues that emerge after eating dairy products. These issues include constipation, bloating, gas, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The number and severity of symptoms can vary widely from one person to another, and the type and amount of dairy consumed can affect the presentation of symptoms as well.

“Not all dairy products are created equal, and some contain more lactose than others. First, try experimenting with various types of dairy foods and the amount you consume to identify the main issue,” Newkirk said. “If symptoms remain, then avoiding dairy products altogether is the easiest method. Taking over-the-counter products such as Lactaid before meals with dairy foods may also help, but this does not work for everyone.”

If one’s lactose intolerance does lead to a total elimination of dairy, it’s important to find other sources of calcium to meet your daily nutritional requirements. To fill the calcium gap, Newkirk recommends foods such as broccoli, oranges, kale, spinach, collard greens, soy beans and salmon.

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Dancing with the Stars in Myanmar

Manage episode 245614033 series 1537964
Known in the UK as Strictly Come Dancing and across the globe as Dancing with the Stars, this BBC brand is known for pairing celebrities with professional dancers, having their performances scrutinised by a panel of judges and allowing the public to vote for their favourite. This autumn the show is being created for the first time in Myanmar. What does it take to bring this format to a new audience and create the programme from scratch? The venture is the passion project of French brothers Henri and Benoit de Lorme. They’ve already brought formats like Masterchef to the country. But dancing is a very different proposition, and in Myanmar there are many cultural sensitivities to be aware of. One is around the design of the costumes, where the need to create something flamboyant which works for camera also needs to take into account local sensitivities around how much flesh can be exposed. It’s also a challenging country to work in as the media companies are still in their infancy and there are shortages of people with the necessary skills to realise these big projects. In addition there is the deadline to build the set, the process of getting the celebrities and new judges trained and the last minute cast changes. With so much to do in a short space of time, it’s going to be a challenge to get everything in place by the first broadcast. Ali Fowle follows the show as it evolves and finds out how the de Lorme brothers work together - and what legacy they plan to create. This is an updated version of the podcast - edited to correct a minor factual error.

58 episodes


So you have created a new DLL that implements a set of APIs. This creates value for your system by adding important functionality.  Now you want to add the header files and libraries to your SDK.

Of course you can configure your SDK to add the files, but let's add to the requirement.  The new DLL is part of your BSP, and your BSP is used by multiple OS designs.  Or, like me, you use this same code across multiple BSPs each with multiple OS designs.  So, configuring the SDK for each is a manual process, and manual processes are not idiot proof.  That means that you will probably waste time creating SDKs that don't include your important files.  Hopefully you will catch this in testing...

The following is a simple way to use the sources file and makefile.inc to add necessary files to the SDK.  This removes the manual process.

Let's assume that the DLL build folder contains the following files:

 - MyDll.c
 - MyDll.h
 - MyDll.def
 - sources
 - Makefile

For a quick refresher:
 - Build.exe parses the sources file and passes the result to nmake which opens the makefile and follows the rules to build the dll
 - We are building this in the BSP with RELEASETYPE=PLATFORM so the dll will be put in $(_TARGETPLATROOT)\target\$(_CPUINDPATH), but we don't care about that for this discussion
 - We do care about the lib (MyDll.lib) file that is created.  It is put in $(_TARGETPLATROOT)\lib\$(_CPUINDPATH).  This lib file exposes the APIs to applications and allows for implicit linking at runtime.

Now what we want to do is put MyDLL.lib and MyDll.h in the SDK.

Start with the sources file:

It is pretty simple and builds MyDll.dll.  Now let's tell it to do something after it finishes building the DLL.  To do that we use WINCETARGETFILES which is used to define a target that gets built after building the target defined in the sources file.  I will name this new target "CopySDK".  So add the following to the sources file:

Now, when build runs it will try to build the target CopySDK, but it doesn't have any rules for building CopySDK.  To add the rule for CopySDK, we will create a new file named makefile.inc.

Start by adding the target CopySDK:

Of course we need it to do something. Let's start by making sure that the folders exist in the OS design for the SDK.  We need both Inc and Lib folder trees

Almost finished, now add the following to copy all header files and the lib file to the SDK folders:

        xcopy /I /D /Q *.h $(_PROJECTSDKROOT)\Inc > nul

That is it, when you build this folder it will put the necessary files into the SDK folders so that when you roll the SDK your developer customers can take advantage of all of the work that you have done.

Go to Summary of Building Windows CE

Copyright © 2008 – Bruce Eitman
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Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commonsmarker or House of Lordsmarker of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Privy Council, the successor of the Privy Council of England, was formerly a powerful institution, but its policy decisions are now controlled by one of its committees, the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. It advises the Sovereign on the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, and issues executive orders known as Orders-in-Council and Orders of Council. Orders-in-Council make government regulations and appointments. Orders of Council are issued under the specific authority of Acts of Parliament, which delegate such matters to the Council, and are normally used to regulate public institutions. The Council advises on the issuing of Royal Charters, which grant special status to incorporated bodies and city and borough status to towns.

The Council also performs judicial functions, which are for the most part delegated to the Judicial Committeemarker. The Committee consists of senior judges appointed as Privy Counsellors: justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdommarker, judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Walesmarker, judges of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland and judges of the Inner House of the Court of Sessionmarker (the supreme civil court of Scotlandmarker). It was formerly a supreme court of appeal for the entire British Empire, and continues to hear appeals from British Overseas Territories, Sovereign Base Areas, Crown Dependencies and some Commonwealth countries.

During the reigns of the Norman monarchs, the English Crown was advised by a royal court, which consisted of magnates, ecclesiastics and high officials. The body originally concerned itself with advising the Sovereign on legislation, administration and justice. Later, different bodies assuming distinct functions evolved from the court. The courts of law took over the business of dispensing justice, while Parliament became the supreme legislature of the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Council retained the power to hear legal disputes, either in the first instance or on appeal. Furthermore, laws made by the Sovereign on the advice of the Council, rather than on the advice of Parliament, were accepted as valid.

Powerful Sovereigns often used the body to circumvent the courts and Parliament. For example, a committee of the Council—which later became the Court of the Star Chamber—was during the fifteenth century permitted to inflict any punishment except death, without being bound by normal court procedure. During Henry VIII's reign, the Sovereign, on the advice of the Council, was allowed to enact laws by mere proclamation. The legislative pre-eminence of Parliament was not restored until after Henry VIII's death. Though the royal Council retained legislative and judicial responsibilities, it became a primarily administrative body. The Council consisted of forty members in 1553, but the Sovereign relied on a smaller committee, which later evolved into the modern Cabinet.

By the end of the English Civil War, the monarchy, House of Lords and Privy Council were abolished. The remaining house of Parliament, the House of Commons, instituted a Council of State to execute laws and to direct administrative policy. The forty-one members of the Council were elected by the Commons; the body was headed by Oliver Cromwell, the de facto military dictator of the nation. In 1653, however, Cromwell became Lord Protector, and the Council was reduced to between thirteen and twenty-one members, all elected by the Commons. In 1657, the Commons granted Cromwell even greater powers, some of which were reminiscent of those enjoyed by monarchs. The Council became known as the Protector's Privy Council; its members were appointed by the Lord Protector, subject to Parliament's approval.

In 1659, shortly before the restoration of the monarchy, the Protector's Council was abolished. Charles II restored the royal Privy Council, but he, like previous Stuart monarchs, chose to rely on a small committee of advisers. Under George I even more power passed to this committee. It now began to meet in the absence of the Sovereign, communicating their decisions to him after the fact. Thus the Privy Council, as a whole, ceased to be a body of important confidential advisers to the Sovereign; the role passed to a committee of the Privy Council, now known as the Cabinet.

The Sovereign, when acting on the Council's advice, is known as the "King-in-Council" or "Queen-in-Council". The members of the Council are collectively known as "The Lords of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council" (sometimes "The Lords and others of ..."). The chief officer of the body is the Lord President of the Council, who is the fourth highest Great Officer of State, a member of the Cabinet, and normally, the Leader of either the House of Lordsmarker or the House of Commonsmarker. Another important official is the Clerk, whose signature is appended to all orders made in the Council.

Both "Privy Counsellor" and "Privy Councillor" may be correctly used to refer to a member of the Council. The former, however, is preferred by the Privy Council Office, emphasising English usage of the term "Counsellor" as "one who gives counsel", as opposed to "one who is a member of a council." A Privy Counsellor is said to be "sworn of" the Council when he or she first joins it.

The Sovereign may appoint anyone a Privy Counsellor, but in practice appointments are made only on the advice of the Government, and generally consist only of senior members of parliament, the church and judiciary. There is no limit to the numbers sworn in as members. As of August 2008 there are 538 members. However, the members have no right to attend all meetings of the Privy Council, and only some are summoned to each meeting (in practice at the Prime Minister's discretion).

Members include the Church of England's three highest ecclesiastics—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London. Senior members of the Royal Family may also be appointed—Prince Philip is a member, the most senior at present in terms of service, and is the only present member not to be appointed by the current monarch, having been appointed to the council by her father. The Private Secretary to the Sovereign is always appointed to the Council.

Several senior judges—justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdommarker, judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Walesmarker, judges of the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland and judges of the Inner House of the Court of Sessionmarker (the highest court in Scotland)—are also named to the Privy Council.

The bulk of Privy Counsellors, however, are politicians. The Prime Minister, ministers in the cabinet, and the Leader of the Opposition must be sworn to the Privy Council on appointment. Leaders of large parties in the House of Commons, First Ministers of the devolved assemblies, some senior ministers outside the cabinet, and on occasion senior Parliamentarians are appointed Privy Counsellors. As Privy Counsellors are bound by their oath to keep matters discussed at Council meetings secret, the appointment of the leaders of Opposition parties as Privy Counsellors allows the Government to share confidential information with them "on Privy Council terms". This usually only happens in special circumstances, such as in matters of national security. For example Tony Blair met with Leader of the Opposition Iain Duncan Smith and Leader of the Liberal Democrats Charles Kennedy on privy council terms to discuss the evidence for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Although the Privy Council is primarily a British institution, officials from some other Commonwealth realms are also appointed to the body. By 2000, the most notable instance was New Zealand, whose Prime Minister, senior politicians, Chief Justice and Court of Appeal judges were conventionally made Privy Counsellors. However, appointments of New Zealand members have since been discontinued. Until the latter part of the 20th century, the prime ministers and chief justices of Canada and Australia were also appointed to Privy Councellors. Prime Ministers of some other Commonwealth countries which retain the Queen as their sovereign continue to be sworn as Privy Counsellors.

Privy Council oath

Although regarded by the Privy Council as an act of treason to disclose the Privy Council oath, in answer to a written parliamentary question to the President of the Council, this was stated and published for the first time; 28 July 1998.

The following oath is administered to Privy Counsellors before they take office:

Membership ceases upon the dissolution of the Privy Council, which automatically occurs six months after the death of a monarch. (Formerly, until a statute to the contrary was passed during the reign of Anne, the death of a monarch brought an end to the Council immediately.) By convention, however, the Sovereign reappoints all members of the Council after its dissolution; hence, membership is, in practice, for life.

The Sovereign may however remove an individual from the Council, and individuals may choose to resign to avoid expulsion. The last individual to leave the Privy Council voluntarily was Jonathan Aitken, who left on 25 June 1997 following allegations of perjury.He was one of only three Privy Counsellors to resign in the twentieth century (the others being John Profumo, who resigned on 26 June 1963, and John Stonehouse, who resigned on 17 August 1976). The last individual to be expelled from the Council against his will was Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet, who was removed on 13 December 1921 for pro-German activities during the First World War.

Victoria held her first Privy Council meeting on the day of her accession in 1837.
Meetings of the Privy Council are normally held once each month wherever the Sovereign may be residing at the time. The quorum, according to the Privy Council Office, is three, though some statutes provide for other quorum (for example, section 35 of Opticians Act 1989 (c. 44) provides for a lower quorum of two).

The Sovereign attends the meeting, though his or her place may be taken by two or more Counsellors of State. Under the Regency Acts 1937 to 1953, Counsellors of State may be chosen from amongst the Sovereign's spouse and the four individuals next in the line of succession who are over 21 years of age (18 for the Heir to the Throne). Normally the Sovereign remains standing at meetings of the Privy Council, so that no other members may sit down, thereby keeping meetings short. The Lord President reads out a list of Orders to be made, and the Sovereign merely says "Approved."

Only a few privy counsellors attend these regular meetings. The settled practice is that day-to-day meetings of the Council are attended by four privy counsellors, usually the Ministers responsible for the matters being approved. Unless prevented from attending, the Government Minister holding office as Lord President of the Council is usually among the privy counsellors present. Under Britain's modern conventions of parliamentary government and constitutional monarchy, every order made in Council has been drafted by a Government Department and has already been approved by the responsible Ministers—the action taken by the Queen in Council is a mere formality required for the valid adoption of the measure.

Full meetings of the Privy Council are only held when the reigning Sovereign announces his or her own engagement (which last happened on 23 November 1839, in the reign of Queen Victoria); or when there is a Demise of the Crown, either by the death or abdication of the monarch. A full meeting of the Privy Council was also held on 6 February 1811, when George, Prince of Wales, took the oaths upon entering into the execution of the royal authority as Prince Regent, as required by Act of Parliament. The current statutes regulating the establishment of a Regency in the case of minority or incapacity of the Sovereign also require any Regents to take their oaths before the Privy Council.

In the case of a demise of the crown, the Privy Council—together with the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the Aldermen of the City of Londonmarker and representatives of Commonwealth nations—makes a proclamation declaring the accession of the new Sovereign and receives an oath from the new monarch relating to the security of the Church of Scotlandmarker, as required by law. That special assembly of the Privy Council and others held to proclaim the accession of the new Sovereign and to receive the required statutory oath from the monarch, is known as an Accession Council. The last such meetings were held on 6 February and 8 February 1952. Given that Her present Majesty was abroad when the last Demise of the Crown took place, the Accession Council had to meet twice, once to proclaim the Sovereign (meeting of 6 February 1952), and then, after the new Queen had arrived in Britain, to receive from Her the oath required by statute (meeting of 8 February 1952).

The Sovereign exercises executive authority by making Orders-in-Council upon the advice of the Privy Council. Orders-in-Council, which are drafted by the government rather than by the Sovereign, are secondary legislation and are used to make government regulations and to make government appointments. Furthermore, Orders-in-Council are used to grant the Royal Assent to laws passed by the legislative authorities of British Crown dependencies.

Distinct from Orders-in-Council are Orders of Council. Whilst the former are made by the Sovereign on the advice of the Privy Council, the latter are made by members of the Privy Council without the participation of the Sovereign. They are issued under the specific authority of Acts of Parliament, and are normally used to regulate public institutions.

The Sovereign, furthermore, issues Royal Charters on the advice of the Privy Council. Charters grant special status to incorporated bodies; they are used to grant city and borough status to towns, and "chartered" status to certain professional or educational bodies. The Privy Council therefore deals with a wide variety of matters, including university statutes, graveyards, coinage, and dates of bank holidays.

The Crown-in-Council also performs certain judicial functions. Within the United Kingdom, the Crown-in-Council hears appeals from ecclesiastical courts, the Court of Admiralty of the Cinque Ports, prize courts and the Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, appeals against schemes of the Church Commissioners and appeals under certain Acts of Parliament (e.g., the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975). The Crown-in-Council was formerly a supreme court of appeal for the entire British Empire, however a number of Commonwealth countries have now abolished such appeals. The Privy Council does continue to hear appeals from several Commonwealth countries, from British Overseas Territories, Sovereign Base Areas and crown dependencies. The aforementioned cases are theoretically decided by the monarch in Council, but are in practice heard and decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Councilmarker, which consists of senior judges who are Privy Counsellors. The decision of the Committee is presented in the form of "advice" to the monarch, but in practice it is always followed by the Sovereign, who formally approves the recommendation of the Judicial Committee. The Judicial Committee had direct jurisdiction in cases relating to the Scotland Act 1998, the Government of Wales Act 1998 and the Northern Ireland Act 1998, but this was transferred to the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdommarker in 2009.

Notable orders

In the 1960s, the Privy Council made an order to evict the 2,000 inhabitants of the 65-island Chagos Archipelagomarker in the Indian Oceanmarker, in preparation for the establishment of joint United States-United Kingdom military base on the largest outlying island Diego Garciamarker, some distant. In 2000 the High Court ruled the 1971 Immigration Ordinance preventing resettlement unlawful. In 2004, the Privy Council, under Jack Straw's tenure, overturned the ruling. In 2006 the High Court of Justicemarker found the Privy Council's decision to be unlawful. Sir Sydney Kentridge QC described the treatment of the Chagossians as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards". He said there was no known precedent "for the lawful use of prerogative powers to remove or exclude an entire population of British subjects from their homes and place of birth".

The Privy Council banned GCHQ staff from joining a trade union.

The Civil Service Order in Council 1995 allowed Ministers to appoint political advisors with management authority over Her Majesty's Civil Service.

Rights and privileges of members

Although the Privy Council as a whole is "The Most Honourable", individual Privy Counsellors are entitled to the style "The Right Honourable". Peers who are also members of the Privy Council append the post-nominal letters "PC" to indicate membership as they are already entitled to the style "The Right Honourable" (in the case of barons, viscounts and earls) or other higher style (in the case of dukes and marquesses), even when they are not Privy Counsellors. For commoners, on the other hand, "The Right Honourable" is sufficient identification of status as a Privy Counsellor. The Earl of Mar and Kellie and the Earl of Scarbrough prefer not to be addressed as 'The Rt Hon' at all on the grounds that the prefix more properly belongs to Privy Counsellors. The Ministry of Justice takes a similar position.

Privy Counsellors are entitled to positions in the order of precedence in England and Wales. At the beginning of each new Parliament, and at the discretion of the Speaker, members of the House of Commons who are Privy Counsellors usually take the oath of allegiance before all other members except the Speaker him or herself and the Father of the House (the most senior member of the House). Often, whenever a Privy Counsellor rose to make a speech in the House of Commons at the same time as another member, the Speaker would first recognise the Privy Counsellor. This informal custom, however, was considered obsolete by 1998.

Also, only Privy Counsellors can present Royal Messages to the Houses of Parliament, and only they can signify, at the monarch's command, the royal consent to the examination of a bill affecting the rights of the Crown.

Privy Counsellors are allowed to sit on the steps to the Sovereign's Throne in the House of Lords Chamber during debates. They share this privilege with hereditary Lords who were members of the House of Lordsmarker before the reform of 1999, diocesan bishops of the Church of England (who are not yet Lords Spiritual), retired bishops who formerly sat in the House of Lords, the Dean of Westminster, Peers of Ireland, the eldest child of members of the House of Lords, the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod.

Each Privy Counsellor has the individual right of personal access to the Sovereign. Peers are considered to enjoy the same right individually; members of the House of Commons possess the right collectively. In each case, personal access may only be used to tender advice on public affairs.

Other councils

The Privy Council is one of the four principal councils of the Sovereign. The other three are the courts of law, the Commune Concilium (Common Council, or Parliament) and the Magnum Concilium (Great Council, or the assembly of all the Peers of the Realm). All are still in existence, or at least have never been formally abolished, but the Magnum Concilium has not been summoned since 1640 and was considered obsolete then.

Several other Privy Councils have advised the Sovereign. Englandmarker and Scotland (see Privy Council of Scotland) once had separate Privy Councils, but the Acts of Union 1707, which united the two countries into the Kingdom of Great Britainmarker, replaced both with a single body. Ireland, on the other hand, continued to have a separate Privy Council even after the Act of Union 1800. The Privy Council of Ireland was abolished in 1922, when the southern part of Ireland separated from the United Kingdom; it was succeeded by the Privy Council of Northern Ireland, which became dormant after the suspension of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. No further appointments were made, and fewer than ten appointees were alive as of May 2008.

Canadamarker has had its own Privy Council—the Queen's Privy Council for Canada—since 1867. While the Canadian Privy Council is specifically "for Canada", the Privy Council discussed above is not "for the United Kingdom"; in order to clarify the ambiguity where necessary, the latter is referred to as the Imperial Privy Council. Equivalent organs of state in other Commonwealth realms, such as Australia and New Zealand, are called Executive Councils.

See also

External links

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Bob Dylan’s journey: Drugs, suicide bid, and Nobel Prize

10-25-2016 Posted in Addiction, Cocaine Addiction, Depression, Drug Abuse, Marijuana

Bob Dylan has become the first songwriter to win a Nobel Prize. He had also won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his profound impact on popular music and American culture. The recent development of Dylan winning one of the most prestigious awards given for outstanding contribution in the field of academic, cultural, or scientific advances, has received its own share of credit and critics. Some were disappointed that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature did not go to an author but to a songwriter and that there were many authors who deserved it. However, many people in musical, academic, and literary committees have welcomed the decision.

Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman, Dylan (75) won the prize for creating new poetic expressions within the American song tradition. He began performing in rock-n-roll bands in high school. In 1961, he moved to New York and released his first self-titled album in 1962 following which he released a number of albums and rose to fame. In an interview in March 1966, Dylan claimed to “have kicked a severe heroin addiction habit prior to moving to New York.”

He also confessed to getting suicidal thoughts of jumping off a building or shooting himself in the head. However, in an interview in 1984, Dylan denied being hooked on drugs and that drugs had any influence on his songwriting. As per recently discovered recordings of an interview with Robert Shelton of the New York Times, Dylan confessed to being addicted to heroin in the 60s and spent $25 a day to fund his habit.

The reflection of Dylan’s addiction habit and suicidal thoughts can be seen in some of the lyrics of his songs. Some of them are:

“Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me / I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to” – Mr. Tambourine Man (1964)

“Everybody must get stoned!” – Rainy Day Women (1969)

“They’re spoonfeeding Casanova / To get him to feel more assured / Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence / After poisoning him with words” – Desolation Row (1965)

Managing drug-seeking behavior is difficult

Drug addiction is characterized by drug-seeking and drug-using behavior that is difficult to control. Though the initial decision to take a drug is voluntary, repeated consumption of the drug can bring about a change in the brain structure that can interfere with one’s daily routines. Long-term drug use can affect other brain functions related to decision-making, learning, judgment, behavior and memory.

As drug addiction causes an intense drug craving, individuals find it hard to resist drugs and are prone to relapse during the recovery period. No one factor is said to be responsible for the addiction problem, in fact, a combination of various factors can act as trigger. Some of the factors are:

Environment: An individual with a relative or a friend addicted to substances is more prone to substance addiction. Factors such as peer pressure, stress and physical abuse can also contribute to the problem.

Genetics: An individual addicted to drugs is highly influenced by genetic traits. Factors such as a person’s gender and ethnicity can also influence the addiction habit.

Symptoms of drug addiction depend on an individual’s genetic structure, the drug being abused and the frequency of abuse. Substance abuse can produce noticeable behavioral or physical signs, like dilated pupils, irritability, depression, and financial problems. The most common symptoms of drug use include anxiety, depression, agitation, intoxication, lethargy, aggressiveness, and violent behavior. Moreover, repeated consumption of drugs leads to increased tolerance to the drug, thereby, requiring larger quantities to produce the same effect.

Recovery road map

Drug use and addiction is preventable and requires a strong prevention program to educate people in schools, colleges, and communities about the harmful effects of drug use and addiction. Addiction is treatable and can be effectively managed with comprehensive recovery interventions.

If you or someone whom you know is fighting addiction, it’s time to seek professional help. Contact the 24/7 Drug Addiction Help to begin your path to sobriety and find the best outpatient drug abuse treatment centers. Call at our 24/7 helpline number 866-403-5607 or chat online to know about one of the best inpatient drug abuse treatment centers.

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System attraction: depicting the emergent nature of software architecture

Architecture is an emergent property, and like any respectable emergent property it is hard to communicate.

Visualization is the best medium I know for this purpose. However, I could not find a visualization that serves the purpose properly. There are many ways to visualize a software system, and there are many tools that do it. A common way of representing software systems is by displaying it as a graph. The graph is typically laid out to exhibit a certain desired structure such as inheritance or containment. These are great tools when looking at those aspects.

However, in my experiment, I wanted to show structure as an emerging property rather than impose a certain view on the system. To this end, I asked myself "where does code want to be?". Extrapolating object-oriented principles, I wanted to let the code go both where it is needed and next to what it needs.

Designing a visualization with this purpose in mind turned out to be rather straightforward. I simply displayed all classes, methods and attributes as nodes and inheritance, containment, invocations and accesses as edges, and I used a force based layout to arrange the graph. The result is a visualization as can be seen below. I named it the System Attraction and the implementation can be found in Moose.

What can you see here?

Classes are black. Methods are red. Attributes are blue. Method containment, attribute containment, and class inheritance are gray. Invocations are red. And accesses are blue.

While things might appear random at first, at a deeper look there is a certain order that emerges from all the entangling. You might notice that colors are not uniformly distributed throughout the space. At the center, there appears to be much agglomeration of red surrounded by blue. This seems to indicate that there exist a consolidated behavior at the center of the system. There are groups of black spots (i.e., classes) that want to be close together. Also, the blue backbone on the bottom right seems to indicate a significant aggregation of related data.

To get a better feeling for how systems can be different, let's compare the above example with the one below. The two systems are comparable in size, yet, they exhibit much different patterns. The second system is much stronger on state. In fact, it looks as if it's the data that drives the system, and methods are just adjacent. Furthermore, while the first system seems to have at least one strong agglomeration of behavior, the second one has multiple small ones.

These picture exhibit macro emergent patterns that are determined by forces in the code. For example, a method is indeed attached to its classes, but if there are many other external interactions, the method will tend to go away from its class. The visualization lets the sum of all these forces decide the shape of the system.

Few visualizations offer a meaningful outcome both when applied in the large and when used in the small. System Attraction is an experiment that aims to offer value at several granularity levels.

For example, look at the picture below showing a visualization applied on one single class.

This class has essentially an equal amount of attributes and methods. What's more, one method seems to be particularly lonely. It's as if, it does not want to be a method at all. Guess what. Here is the code:

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
   // ignored

Let's compare this class with another one. This class has a more classic structure with multiple methods and few attributes. The methods seem to collaborate with one another and the attribute usage is reasonably distributed throughout the methods. It looks like a tidy class with proper structure in place.

If you investigate the class through the lenses of a classic visualization, such as a class blueprint, you can indeed see a rather clean structure.

Let's add to our scene a collaborator class next to the original one.

The class changes shape a bit. Let's add another one. The shape changes a bit more.

Now, let's see what happens when we visualize this class together with all its provider and client classes.

Ahh, where is our class now? The tiny tidy shape cannot be seen anymore. Let us highlight our class.

When placed next to its collaborators, the class changes shape dramatically. Regularity is secondary to distinct interests. For example, a group of four methods wants to be the center of everyone's attention, while some other methods want to mingle with other classes in the north.

Software architecture is an emergent property. Clearly, this shape of the system does not reflect any traditional view on architecture. There are no model-view-controller or layer patterns to be found. Nevertheless, patters do emerge. And what is architecture if not the structure that defines the system?

Indeed, when we look at the code only through a diagram that imposes a predefined structure, such as a UML diagram, we will tend to see only the defined regularities. These visualizations are not bad. They have their place precisely when it is those regularities we want to reason about. But, only being exposed to rigid shapes encourages a type of thinking that leads to the illusion of complete controllability.

System Attraction is an exercise that offers a radically different view on a software system. By not imposing a specific structure, it enables hidden patterns to emerge.

A common point of view says that architecture is only to be seen in the large. Yet, the forces embedded in the code influence the shape of the system in the small as well. Even if it is more comfortable to see a class as having a regular and controllable shape, when seen in its usage environment, the shape can morph in unexpected ways.

In our exercise we only looked at simple code elements such as classes and methods and standard interactions such as inheritance and invocations. We completely ignored technology specific details. And we completely ignored the social behavior around the software system. Even so, the experiment shows that software architecture is driven by interaction and it never is single minded. Only by acknowledging the underlying forces in a software system can you handle them appropriately.

Is this the right view for acting on a software system? Likely not. But, the goal of the exercise is to help communicate the emergent nature of software architecture. Why is it important to communicate it? Because we need to move from a controlling model towards a distributed one in which everyone is empowered to contribute.

Posted by Tudor Girba at 3 October 2013, 11:22 pm with tags moose, assessment, daily link


Ask LibreOffice - RSS feed and answers for LibreOfficeenMon, 28 Nov 2016 16:54:11 +0100average of sums's say I have some data on columns B through E that I want to average as follows: - for each row: sum the four columns - then take the average such sum Do I *have* to get another column for the sum and then take the average of that column or is there a more direct approach? Because pulling ``=SUM(...)`` down ``500'000`` rows **does** take a while. DiesNutsMon, 28 Nov 2016 16:54:11 +0100


Since the end of the Cold War, European security institutions have pursued the dream of a “Europe whole and free,” in which security is indivisible—the security of each state in the region is linked to the security of every other; comprehensive—the politico-military, economic, environmental, and human dimensions of security are complementary, interconnected, and interdependent; and cooperative—security is achieved through cooperation among the region’s states and organizations. Russia has taken a consistent, long-term approach to those principles, emphasizing the hard security it desired while minimizing the dimension of human rights and democratic governance. It developed a playbook for its approach, one that worked in the 1990s.  Russia has challenged the liberal international order, but has kept its basic playbook for European security. Analyzing how this happened can shed light on the problems faced today and help to evaluate opportunities for practical measures that might shore up transparency and confidence building during what appears to be another long period of adversity.

Forging the Link: Hard Security and Democratic Governance

The concept of comprehensive security was enshrined in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which explicitly linked hard security to human rights.1 The linkage grew stronger with time: on November 19, 1990, twenty-two countries—members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact—signed the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) in Paris. That same day, those nations and their neutral neighbors adopted the Charter of Paris at the second summit of the Conference on Security and Co-operation (CSCE). The charter further linked security to “democracy as the only system of government of our nations” and established the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the Joint Consultative Group (charged with facilitating implementation of the CFE).

Philip Remler
Philip Remler is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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In 1999, at the sixth summit—by which point the CSCE had been renamed the OSCE (replacing “conference” with “organization”)2—heads of state and government adopted both an Adapted CFE Treaty and the Istanbul Charter for European Security, which featured military and human dimension principles.3 Later, in 2002, the OSCE created the Open Skies Consultative Commission to help implement the Open Skies Treaty.

The OSCE thus became a nexus for the Western-led order, which promoted rules-based political and security behavior in the international sphere and liberal democratic governance in the domestic sphere. However, the linkage of hard security with liberal democracy challenged autocratic states, which wanted the former without the latter. Unfortunately for them, after World War II, only the liberal democratic idea had legitimacy in the eyes of many of the world’s peoples—to the extent that dictatorships were forced to include the word “democratic” in their names (for example, the German Democratic Republic and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

It is not surprising, then, that as the Russian state has grown more autocratic at home since the end of the 1990s, it has been challenging both the rules-based international order and that order’s adherence to liberal democracy. This trend culminated in its 2014 seizure and annexation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine. In the human dimension, Russia struck alliances of convenience with autocratic and ultra-right forces in other countries, buttressed by a shared profession of “traditional” values (held up as an alternative to the “decadent” democratic West). Russia causes further concern by its use of digital platforms to undermine democratic forms of government and rules-based multilateral structures. Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that “the liberal idea has become obsolete.”4

This is nothing new. The Soviet Union did not subscribe to democratic governance or universal human rights and, from the beginning, sought to deemphasize the human dimension; post-Soviet Russia has done the same. Facing the need to develop an approach to the linkage of hard security and democracy in the international order, Russia developed a new playbook to deal with the OSCE, its related bodies, and the security treaties and agreements undertaken by its participating states. This approach involves limited cooperation on sensitive issues such protracted conflicts, while fighting a rearguard action on the human dimension. But Russia’s approach is no longer working. Use of the playbook—particularly to deal with the annexation of Crimea and other recent actions in Ukraine—has severely isolated Russia, representing a significant threat to the viability of multilateral approaches to European security and to vital fora such as the OSCE.

Laying the Groundwork for an International Order

Adoption of the Helsinki Final Act represented a long-sought victory for the Soviets: it reinforced the West’s recognition of the borders the Soviet Union had established in Central and Eastern Europe, and it implicitly recognized the Soviet sphere of influence.5 In return, the Soviet Union recognized that human rights within its borders and those of its Warsaw Pact allies could be a legitimate focus for all signatories—that human rights violations anywhere are a concern for all. Privately, then general secretary Leonid Brezhnev maintained that the acceptance of Helsinki’s human rights articles was redemption for the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.6 Nonetheless, the Soviets bristled when the West used the CSCE as a platform for human rights criticism. The Soviet Union preferred the CSCE to concentrate on the security “basket” of issues.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, most of its successor states viewed CSCE participation, along with United Nations (UN) membership, as affirmation of their independence, and they sought it eagerly. Russia, however, believed for a brief period that the CSCE could be something more: an organization that could supersede NATO to become the forum for all security issues in Europe. In that scenario, Russia could have a greater say and perhaps even a veto, since the CSCE operated by consensus.7 But this hope was dashed by the realities of German reunification, which provoked trepidation among the leaders of Britain, France, Poland, and others. They remembered the dictum of Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general—that NATO existed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”—and wanted continued U.S. commitment to NATO to ensure the good intentions of a newly enlarged Germany. NATO’s continued existence eventually gave rise to a Russian narrative that accused the United States of sacrificing the CSCE’s potential for real European concord on the altar of old-fashioned Cold War thinking.8

In the early 1990s, a security function of the CSCE made it worthwhile for Russia to accept the security-governance linkage: dealing with the series of small wars that erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the secessionist wars of Karabakh (Azerbaijan), South Ossetia (Georgia), Abkhazia (Georgia), Transdniestria (Moldova), and Chechnya (Russian Federation). With the exception of Chechnya, these were not wars for independence, as later portrayed. Rather, they were struggles to be part of polities other than the ones to which Soviet (and later international) law assigned them. Karabakh wanted to join the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic; and Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria, fearful of the rise of Georgian nationalism and Moldovan/Romanian unionism, wanted to remain inside the Soviet Union while the union republics of which they were part sought to leave. For this reason, the Soviet military and security services supported the Abkhaz, Ossetians, and Transdniestrians as part of their efforts to keep the union together in its final years. When the collapse of the Soviet Union made annexation of the separatists an untenable position in international law, the secessionists switched their stated goal to independence. However, the initial goals of the separatists and their backers—uniting Karabakh with Armenia and Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria with Russia—never completely disappeared.

Russia’s position toward these conflicts was therefore delicate and appeared from the outside to be contradictory. In the 1990s, Russia, like the Soviet state before it, remained the patron of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria, tacitly guaranteeing their security and demonstrating this by stationing troops in all three places. At the same time, Russia participated as a nominally neutral mediator in international efforts to resolve all the conflicts. This included the Karabakh conflict, in which Russia was not the principal patron of the separatists but instead had deep and enduring interests with both Armenia and Azerbaijan. These included not only state interests but also the mercenary interests of the Russian military. The UN was the principal negotiating forum for the Abkhazia conflict, and it maintained a militarized but unarmed observer mission to monitor Russia’s peacekeeping operation there. The OSCE took an auxiliary role in Abkhazia but was the principal forum for mediating the Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria conflicts.

Russia’s positions on these conflicts were complicated by its war against separatists in Chechnya, which began covertly in early 1994 but then burst into an open and bloody conflict by the end of the year. Further complicating matters, some North Caucasus fighters from the Russian Federation fought on the Abkhaz side against Georgia, with Moscow’s encouragement, but later fought against Moscow in Chechnya. Most notorious of these fighters was Shamil Basayev, who topped Russia’s terrorist list until his death in 2006. In this difficult situation, Russia approved the April 1995 deployment to Chechnya of an OSCE Assistance Group, which developed into a platform for negotiations between Moscow and the rebels.

Over time, Russia developed a playbook to manage what became protracted conflicts—a playbook in which the OSCE played a significant role. Russia’s goal was to ensure that:

  1. the conflicts did not revert into hot wars against Russia’s desires;
  2. Russia could continue supporting secessionists while playing a mediation role in the settlement process, thus ensuring Russia’s paramount importance to (and enhanced influence on) both sides; and
  3. no settlement, whether comprehensive or interim, could prejudice the composite interests of Russia’s state, clans, and/or institutional groupings.

In Russia’s playbook, the OSCE was a neutral platform to cooperate with the West while pursuing goals that Russia did not share with the West. An astute Russian commentator remarked on “the fundamental difference between the approaches of the Russian Federation and the West to conflicts (‘freezing’ as a priority option for Moscow, and intervention to ensure its ‘settlement’ as the foundation for the approach of the U.S. and the EU).” Key to Russia’s playbook were its peacekeeping operations for Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria, which ensured that Russia could freeze the conflicts in an unresolved state. Keeping them alive but frozen achieved the three goals outlined above. Russia began to hand out large numbers of passports in the separatist areas, producing Russian citizens on whose behalf Russia claimed the right to intervene (Russia has recently extended this “passportization” process to separatists in Ukraine).9 The net result was that Russia could exert maximum leverage on both the separatists and the states party to the conflict (including Armenia, in the case of Karabakh) and could also minimize rivalries and territorial claims that complicated and endangered Russia’s delicate position in its own North Caucasus (for example, the Chechen/Ingush irredentist claims against North Ossetia and Dagestan peoples such as the Avars and Laks).10 Participation in the OSCE’s mediation processes as presumed neutrals helped Russia manage these disparate but vital interests.

That is not to say that all OSCE participating countries viewed Russia’s activities with equanimity; even some states close to or allied with Russia were wary. Informal policies kept Russian participation in the OSCE’s Conflict Prevention Center and field presences to a minimum.

Meanwhile, on the wider security front, Russia’s influence was declining internationally and its armed forces were deteriorating. Thus, in 1999, despite president Boris Yeltsin’s resentment of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Russia made extensive unilateral commitments at the sixth OSCE summit, including to withdraw troops from Georgia and Moldova. He knew that without those commitments, the Adapted CFE Treaty would stand no chance of being signed by the Western states. In the following years, however, it became increasingly clear that, owing to changing international and domestic political conditions, the Adapted CFE Treaty would not be signed by the Baltics (a key Russian goal for the adapted treaty) or ratified by the United States.

In addition, NATO continued to accept new members. This was in strict accordance with the language adopted by all OSCE participants, including Russia, in the Istanbul Charter for European Security:

<EXT>Each participating State has an equal right to security. We reaffirm the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve. Each State also has the right to neutrality. Each participating State will respect the rights of all others in these regards. They will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States. Within the OSCE no State, group of States or organization can have any pre-eminent responsibility for maintaining peace and stability in the OSCE area or can consider any part of the OSCE area as its sphere of influence.</EXT>

However, Russia has claimed that NATO accession by the previous Warsaw Pact members amounted to “strengthen[ing] their security at the expense of the security of other States,” namely Russia. This is an issue on which Russia and the West have continued to be diametrically opposed and which led to the Georgia war in 2008. With Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, Russia began applying analogous thinking to European Union (EU) accession as well, leading to the Ukraine crisis of 2013–2014.

Since Russia’s main goals for the Adapted CFE Treaty, including Baltic treaty accession, could no longer be met—nor could the CFE or Adapted CFE guarantee Russian security by stopping the enlargement of NATO—its interest in conventional arms control waned. In November 2004, Russia announced in the Joint Consultative Group that its troop withdrawals from Moldova and Georgia were complete (though Western states pointed out that Russian troops remained in both). In December 2007, Russia announced that it was suspending compliance with the CFE. In March 2015, Russia suspended its participation in the Joint Consultative Group. Hard security and arms control were the main reasons Moscow accepted the international order laid out in the Helsinki Act, Charter of Paris, and OSCE. As arms control faded, so did Russia’s reasons for committing to the order.

Russia continued to push back against Western human rights criticism. In particular, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) became a focus of Russian ire. The office, headquartered in Warsaw, monitors the national elections of all OSCE states but pays extra attention to countries formerly governed by authoritarian regimes. It found plenty to criticize in its reports on Russia and its friends and allies. ODIHR also holds an annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, which is heavily attended by human rights nongovernmental organizations. The meetings have developed into celebrations of Central Europe’s newly regained liberties and condemnations of human rights abuses by autocratic regimes further east. ODIHR’s efforts have clearly irritated Putin. In his well-known 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, he called the OSCE “a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries.”11

To be sure, Russia did not view all OSCE institutions negatively. The High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM) consistently monitored and spoke out about the rights of Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries adopted restrictive citizenship laws after gaining independence, resulting in a large number of stateless permanent residents whose families had settled in these republics during Soviet times. Promoting the status of the Russian language, and of an implicit Russian right to speak for a loosely defined group of “Russian speakers,” has been a mainstay of Russian foreign policy not only in the Baltics but also throughout the former Soviet Union. The HCNM’s monitoring was therefore welcome to Russia, as were the efforts of two other OSCE institutions: the Representative to the Latvian-Russian Joint Commission on Military Pensioners and the Representative to the Estonian Expert Commission on Military Pensioners. Both dealt with claims of Soviet military veterans residing in those countries. As a marker of its importance to Russia, the Latvian-Russian commission still serves, although there has not been a claim by a pensioner since 2008 and the commission has not met since 2013.12

Storm Clouds Gather

An important inflection point in Russia’s ambiguous attitude toward the multilateral cooperative security system came with the 2008 Georgia war. Tensions had been rising since late 2003, when Mikheil Saakashvili replaced Eduard Shevardnadze as the president of Georgia. The colorful and ambitious Saakashvili gained power by activating the Zviadists (supporters of Georgia’s ultra-nationalist first president); they had loathed Shevardnadze, who had marginalized them from electoral politics. With the ascent of nationalists, Georgia employed harsher rhetoric against Russia. And, in turn, Russia imposed punitive economic measures on Georgia, such as bans on imports and direct flights; harassed Georgians inside Russia; and began preparations for a military intervention.

In the aftermath of the August 2008 war, Western attitudes toward the Russian invasion were mixed. Western leaders decried Russia’s invasion of Georgia and seizure of territory but also believed that Saakashvili’s erratic behavior was partly to blame. Nevertheless, the war doomed Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s proposed European Security Treaty, which he hoped would give Russia a greater say in security issues throughout Europe. In June 2009, the OSCE responded to Medvedev’s proposal by creating the Corfu Process to discuss it. The goal was to ensure that the OSCE remained a serious forum for dialogue between Russia and the West—especially as the other possible forum, the NATO-Russia Council, was mainly being used by the ultra-nationalist Russian envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, to vent his grievances against the West. The Corfu Process helped to keep the door open for dialogue, but other OSCE states were not interested in Medvedev’s goal of increasing Russia’s say in Europe’s security. Both the European Security Treaty and the Corfu Process died slow deaths.

Russia continued, however, to employ its playbook in dealing with protracted conflicts. That included an anomalous sustained drive by Medvedev to resolve the Karabakh conflict, in which Russia was a neutral mediator but had enormous interests on both sides. From 2008 until he left office, Medvedev personally invested in the negotiations between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and then Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, comprised since 1997 of Russia, France, and the United States, became for the duration of Medvedev’s initiative a Russian-led process, with the acquiescence of both France and the United States. Medvedev gave up a number of long-held aims to assume this leadership, including Russia’s desire to employ its own peacekeeping operation in the conflict zone (a goal Russia had pursued since the early 1990s).

Despite the OSCE’s usefulness in maintaining dialogue and managing conflict, Russian resentment of the organization’s work on the human dimension “basket” of issues, as an embodiment of the linkage between security and democratic governance, continued at full strength. ODIHR’s criticisms of Russia’s shortcomings in democratic governance and human rights continued to call into question the legitimacy of a state increasingly suspicious of those ideals. In return, by 2010, Andrey Kelin, then the Russian permanent representative to the OSCE, was castigating the OSCE’s “practice of double standards; thematic and geographic distortions: attempts to use the OSCE’s institutions to mechanically implant neoliberal democratic models in post-Soviet and other countries outside NATO and the EU, without taking into account their national characteristics, civilizations and cultures.”13 In these and similar statements, Russia was giving voice to the resentments of autocratic regimes elsewhere in the OSCE region. These regimes were shaken by the democratic “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics and later by the Arab Spring and the 2013 Euromaidan in Ukraine. And like Russia, they believed that human rights as a concept was a sham designed to promote Western control and that nongovernmental organizations advocating that concept were a fifth column built solely to implement that control.

Crimea and Isolation

The sequence of events leading to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in eastern Ukraine is well-known but not perceived the same in Russia and the West. As a Russian scholar has pointed out, the East and West “do not share a common baseline of facts,” much less an agreement on how to interpret them.14 To the West, the phrasing “Russia’s annexation of Crimea” and “its military intervention in eastern Ukraine” reflect an indisputable set of facts, but to Russia, these descriptions are vicious slander. These vastly different perspectives have clear consequences for discussions in multilateral fora such as the OSCE, where virtually all participating states other than Russia share the West’s baseline of facts.

At the same time, the OSCE has played a central role in international peacemaking efforts in Ukraine, and its efforts have, paradoxically, improved Russia’s view of the organization. The OSCE has become the institutional underpinning of the Normandy Format, the Trilateral Contact Group, and the Minsk Protocol. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) and the OSCE Observer Mission at the Russian Checkpoints Gukovo and Donetsk have helped to keep the fighting in eastern Ukraine from getting out of hand—in other words, they fit into the existing Russian playbook for managing and “freezing” protracted conflicts. The SMM is not deployed in Crimea; this was the price for Russian acceptance of the mission, ensuring that the OSCE would not be involved in monitoring what the West considers to be Russia’s most blatant violation of international law. As a Russian observer points out, under current operating constraints, the SMM cannot establish a universally accepted baseline of facts, and neither can the checkpoint observer mission, which is confined to only 1 kilometer of the 400 kilometer border that Russia shares with the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists.15

OSCE efforts in Ukraine have generally earned positive reviews from Russian writers. Andrey Kelin—who, as noted earlier, denounced the OSCE for hypocrisy and neo-imperialism—declared in 2015 that “the OSCE is now working the way it always should have.”16 Russia’s closest observer of the OSCE, Andrei Zagorski, praised the “remarkable role” that OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Didier Burkhalter (Switzerland) played in 2014.17

But attempts to protract and manage the conflict in Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea, ended up overstraining the mechanism that served Russia so well in the past. The OSCE remains the only platform for sustained, formal dialogue between Russia and the West, but Russia’s adamant denials on Ukraine—and especially its insistence that Crimea is a closed case—have made all dialogue problematic. The West still firmly believes that Russia has engaged in a process of crude territorial conquest, going against the universal border settlement that underlies the entire Helsinki agreement. As one Western official put it, “Russia is signaling the intention to create a ‘new normal,’” and it “behaves as a typical post-hegemon, using [the OSCE] as an instrument to secure its interests. There is space for interaction and recognizing agreed rules to the extent that they meet [Russia’s] own interests.”18

The West’s reaction to this perceived behavior has been to isolate Russia in the OSCE. Even Russia’s closest allies, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, do not defend Russia from Western criticism. Armenia does, but only sporadically. Russia has assumed a defensive position, and its officials in Vienna now grimly recite the adage repeated by Putin: “Russia has only two allies: its army and navy.” Aside from the SMM in Ukraine, Russia appears to be focused on two areas: the “integration of integrations” and the OSCE Structured Dialogue.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko first introduced the concept of integration of integrations in a 2011 article. It emanated from Putin’s announcement of the creation of a Single Economic Space (later named the Eurasian Economic Union or EEU), which would establish a common market for Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Putin called various integration projects, such as the EU and the new Eurasian market, the building blocks of a new European security and economic space.

In 2015, then Russian deputy foreign minister Alexey Meshkov elaborated on the concept, stating that it means cooperation between the EEU and the EU on economic matters and between European and Eurasian security structures (including the OSCE and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization) on European security matters.19 Westerners in both the EU and OSCE dismissed this idea as an attempt to create a “Russian-led Camp” whose members possessed joint institutions that could be considered equal to those of a “Western Camp,” despite the lack of capacity in the Russian-led institutions.20 Westerners view these institutions as little more than vehicles for Russian hegemonic ambitions and treat the concept of integration of integrations with suspicion.

In the absence of another suitable forum, the OSCE Structured Dialogue was launched in December 2016 to discuss concerns surrounding arms control, military exercises, and military encounters. Russia takes the Structured Dialogue seriously, sending senior officials from Moscow to participate. But the Structured Dialogue is hampered by lack of agreement on its goals, including among Western countries. For the Germans who proposed the dialogue, and the “Like-Minded Group” supporting them, the purpose is to lay the groundwork for a quick transition from incident prevention and confidence-building measures—of the sort embodied in the OSCE Vienna Document (VDOC)—to a new, full-blown arms control agreement regulating conventional forces in Europe. The agreement would replace both the original CFE (from which Russia withdrew) and the Adapted CFE (which the United States and some other countries did not ratify).

The United States and some other NATO states reject the idea of a new conventional arms treaty as part of their policy of “no business as usual” with Russia in the wake of its annexation of Crimea and support for separatism in Ukraine. In their view, Russia is not in a position to make credible guarantees on respect for international borders. In addition, practical, on-the-ground application of such a treaty would be problematic as long as Russia maintains that Crimea and its surrounding waters are Russian territory and that it has no military forces in the Donbass that might come under the treaty’s purview. The United States and its supporters still favor the type of incident prevention and confidence-building measures embodied in the VDOC, but they call for its modernization. Updates would include sharing more information on new weapons systems and military exercises.

Russia agrees with the Like-Minded Group that a new CFE Treaty is needed, but rejects incident prevention and confidence-building measures, which it fears would put Russia at a disadvantage in light of NATO’s military strength. In 2016, Russia blocked the regularly scheduled revision of the VDOC, stating, “We can envisage prospects for the modernization of the Vienna Document 2011 only if the North Atlantic Alliance abandons its policy of containment of Russia, recognizes and respects Russian interests, and restores normal relations with the Russian Federation, including in the military sphere.”

Further obscuring the issue, both Russia and the United States say they support “risk reduction” while defining the term in opposite ways. To the United States, it means incident prevention and confidence-building measures, while to Russia, it means an arms control agreement, if recent discussions in OSCE fora are any guide. OSCE officials have admitted that the Structured Dialogue cannot be continued much longer if such basic disconnects cannot be resolved.

Moving Forward

Russia’s long-time playbook for multilateral conflict management in Europe, including via the OSCE, no longer works. Crimea has made it impossible to continue as before. Although Russia will never acknowledge that fact publicly, it will, or has, surely come to this conclusion privately. The question now becomes how to break the stalemate and restore the value of multilateralism. Any progress on the issues themselves can come only after this first step.

With the continued paralysis of the NATO-Russia Council and the suspension of a high-level political dialogue between Russia and the EU, it is fair to say that the OSCE is currently the only active platform for East-West dialogue.21 But dialogue between Russia and the West at the OSCE has stagnated. The West lectures Russia about international law, which Russia views as hypocritical, and Russia maintains a fortress mentality that is geared toward domestic political consumption.

A sustainable, effective dialogue can only be restarted if both sides tone down the rhetoric, agree not to lecture one another, and compartmentalize major demands (on the understanding that they are not dropping those demands). The process should start with an agreement to talk about specific, circumscribed topics that cannot be highly politicized, setting modest goals. There is good precedent for compartmentalization. Former U.S. president Richard Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972 and negotiated in the SALT talks while the Soviets were fighting a proxy war against the United States in Vietnam. Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and former general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and negotiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty while the United States was fighting a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Compartmentalization is difficult, but the OSCE and neutral states can help. If non-NATO states, such as Austria, Finland, or Switzerland, are looking for roles to play—whether within the Structured Dialogue or on the margins—a productive starting point might be to try to broker a gentlemen’s agreement on compartmentalization.

1 The Act was adopted by thirty-five states at the first summit of the CSCE, a forum created in the early 1970s to facilitate negotiations between the East and West. Both the Act and the CSCE, which represented the political process that gave it birth, played fundamental roles in increased cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe and in the establishment of a network of treaties and their governing institutions embodying the comprehensive security concept.

2 The OSCE became a permanent organization during the fourth summit in December 1994. The name change reflected its expanding institutional and operational functions.

3 The CFE was adapted in response to the end of the Warsaw Pact and the NATO accession of ex-Soviet bloc countries.

4 Lionel Barber and Henry Foy, “The Liberal Idea Has Become Obsolete,” Financial Times, June 28, 2019,

5 West Germany agreed in 1970 that the Oder-Neisse line (the Soviet-imposed border between East Germany and Poland) could not be changed by force. The United States, which earlier refused to recognize East Germany’s existence, opened an embassy in East Berlin in 1974.

6 Author interview with Russian official, 2019.

7 William Hill, No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 90–91.

8 Christian Nünlist (principal author), Juhana Aunesluoma, and Benno Zogg, “The Road to the Charter of Paris: Historical Narratives and Lessons for the OSCE Today,” OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions, Vienna, December 2017, 17–23,

9 “Passportization” was a byproduct of wider citizenship issues. As the Soviet Union collapsed, Germany and Romania began offering citizenship to ethnic kin. By 1992, Russia was offering passports to residents of newly independent states who could not receive citizenship in their country of residence. Passportization was selective. For example, South Ossetians could receive Russian passports, but only if they lived in South Ossetia when they applied; Ossetian refugees residing in Russia were not eligible.

10 After Stalin deported the Ingush along with the Chechens in 1944, the Prigorodnyy district of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) was transferred to the North Ossetian ASSR. Tensions developed as many Ingush tried to return from exile after de-Stalinization, and the two sides fought a small war as the Soviet Union was collapsing, leaving displaced persons in camps for decades. Though nominally Islamist, the September 1, 2004, terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, was carried out by Chechen and Ingush fighters, and many of the Ossetian victims were Muslims.

11 Frank Evers, “In Retrospect: Points for Dialogue with Russia in the OSCE Context:

Conclusions from Russian Scientific Periodicals, 2010–2015,” CORE Working Paper 31, Centre for OSCE Research at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, University of Hamburg, May 2018, 5.

12 The Estonian commission was terminated in 2006.

13 Andrey Kelin, “Russia and the OSCE,” Russia in International Affairs 1 (2013): 89, quoted in Evers, “In Retrospect: Points for Dialogue with Russia in the OSCE Context: Conclusions from Russian Scientific Periodicals, 2010–2015,” 6.

14 Personal interview, 2014.

15 Andrei Zagorski, “The OSCE and the Ukraine Crisis,” in Russia: Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security:  IMEMO Supplement to the Russian Edition of the SIPRI Yearbook 2014, eds. Alexey Arbatov and Sergey Oznobishchev (Moscow: Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO RAN), 2015), 57–60,

16 Andrey Kelin, “ОБСЕ Наконец-то работает так, как должна была работать всегда” [The OSCE Is Finally Working the Way It Always Should Have], 2015 interview in Индекс Безопасности 3, 114 (2015): 17–21,

17 Zagorski, “The OSCE and the Ukraine Crisis,” 50.

18 Personal interview, February 2019.

19 Alexey Meshkov, “Russia and Europe: What Next?” International Affairs 6 (2015): 45. For a discussion of Russia’s belief in the distinction between “sovereign” and “dependent” states; the spheres of influence or “camps” this implies; and the idea of a “concert,” dominated by great powers, to make important international decisions, see Bobo Lo, Russia and the New World Disorder (Washington, DC, and London: Brookings Institution and Chatham House, 2015), 40.

20 For example, according to one OSCE official, Russia pushed the OSCE to cooperate with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on transnational threats. But when the OSCE asked the CSTO to co-sponsor a one-day workshop on counterterrorism, the CSTO was bewildered, as it did not have the funds, staff, or infrastructure to participate.

21 Andrei Zagorski, “Russian Views of the OSCE and the 2016 German Chairmanship,” Security and Human Rights 26, 1 (2015): 29.